News & Information for Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts

Main menu

Search form

You are here

I have an problem

March 8, 2013 - 8:04am

Wingnut

I have an problem

I am geting a "burnt" bottom on my breads. I bake at 450 in a gas oven in one cast iron pot and one ceramic pot covered, both have the same effect. I tried putting two layers of parchment paper between the bread and the pot, still no luck. I bake for 40 minutes covered and 8 minutes uncovered.

Cookies and small buns are notorious for scorching their bums. You can by a double-bottom sheet pan at 4 times the cost of a normal one, or just nestle two sheet pans together. The idea is just to get an air space.

Put it in at the same time as everything else.

Check out dabrownman's post about the turkey roaster, that actually sounds like a better and easier solution.

I don't usually bake in a DO but have noted that some folks remove the loaf from the DO and place on the baking stone after the loaf has 'set up' (finished it's oven spring and crust has formed) to continue baking. That's alot of gymnastics with a hot DO and loaf so perhaps Mirko's solution would be easier.

doing the same thing but not for over browning of the bottom. I noticed that my turkey roaster, with a trivet on the bottom to hold the bread off the bottom of the roaster so I could add some extra water for steam without it touching the bread, made the very best crust.

By putting a 1/8 C of water in the bottom of a round DO and then putting a spring form pan bottom over the water, produced the same great crust as the turkey roaster with its trivet. I can see, if you didn't want to remove the bread from the DO, that the spring form bottom could cure the 'black bottom' that a Do can generate.

things at work. Since you are baking in CI and ceramic DO rather than on a stone. 45 minutes if preheat seems excessive. I usually preheat till the oven says, I'm at 450 F, and then load the bread into the DO. Your CI doesn't lag like a thick stone does.

40 minutes of steam with the lid on also seems excessive. Usually 20 - 30 minutes depending on loaf size is plenty. I usually do 20-25 minutes with the lid on then turn down to 425 F convection for 5 minutes more with the lid off. Then the bread comes out of the DO and onto the stone to finish up - usually about 5 more minutes or so - 35 - 40 minutes total before it hits 20f5f on the inside. By the time the bread hits the stone, the stone is at temperature. Used to have a dark bottom every time no matter what I did if it was left in the DO - but no more.

Thanks for all the comments! I guess trial and error are a part this wonderful bread baking experiment. Well it looks like back to the mixing bowl, I just wish I had more people to give the bread away to.

Not a comment on burned crusts since I don't use a DO currently but a comment on having enough people to give bread to...

I bake daily and give most of what I bake away. I have found people love getting a fresh loaf of bread unexpectedly.

You might look around to people you see all the time but don't really pay much attention or who make our lives so much easier such as:

Your trash collectors, cashiers in your grocery store, librarians, locals who walk dogs in your neighborhood - if that happens where you live, your mail carrier, an elderly couple or single person in your neighborhood, a young couple with a home full of young children, a teenager struggling with a hectic schedule, ....Once you start giving the list grows by itself :-)

Janet you're a peach, with a great big heart no doubt. I find most older people do not like my style of bread, too hard. I walk around my neighborhood and say hello to people all the time and they look at me as if I want to give them a right kicking, strange indeed. People are so paranoid they think something is wrong with the bread, like it's chock full of razor blades or whatever. I wish I lived in your neighborhood Janet, it sound wonderful.

If you are baking on a bottom rack, especially the bottommost one, in a gas oven, your pot is sitting directly over the burner. Hot air heats your pot (convection) as well as the direct energy of the burner (radiant). Putting a tray on rack between the one your pot is on and the bottom of the oven will help to diffuse the radiant heat and moderate it. The tray should be large enough to shield the pot, but not so large as to cut off the air flow in the oven. A piece of aluminum foil, shiny side down, directly under your pot ought to do the same thing--but, you'd have to experiment to see what's best with regards to how long the foil should be in place.

Moving the pot up in the oven helps, but not too high, the very top of a gas oven is hotter than the middle.

When I baked in a dutch oven in my gas oven, I would preheat the oven to 450F and long enough for the dutch oven to get to 450F (I have an infra red thermometer); as I recall, it took somewheres between 1-2 hours (preheating the oven with the thermostat set to 500F would speed things up). Then I would bake at 450F for 15 minutes with the top on and the balance with it off. If the bottom was browning too fast with a particular pot, I turned the heat down, too, to 410-425F.

Make sure your oven is calibrated? try an oven themometer to see if the dial temp matches up, ovens can be off by up to 50 degrees. I've baked many loaves at 450° in a dutch oven and have not had that dark of a crust, thus my thought being perhaps your oven is hotter than the dial says?

If this is in fact an issue, a stove with digital controls can be recalibrated up or down by 35 degrees in 5 degree increments by using the keypad - the proper sequence can be found for your model on google. My GE is done by holding both the clock + and - buttons for 5 seconds, then it flashes, then press the up or down depending on which way you want to go. Then it resets after a moment and you are done. The breads look fab, but they do look 25 degrees hotter guessing 475-480 actual. I may be wrong but tried a 480 bake once and they looked very similar to your, thus my supposition...

I would like to add to Nick's recommendation that you also measure the temperatures at different locations in the oven. Be sure to give the thermometer & oven plenty of time to equilibrate after opening the oven and moving the thermometer.

I used to have that problem too. I have an electric oven and I use a cast iron griddle to bake on. I pre heat the oven for an hour +, slide the loaf onto the cast iron and then slip a piece of tin foil (6" x 8" of so) on the shelf below the cast iron. This keeps any more direct radient heat from hitting the bottom of the griddle. Very easy! It still gets the convected heat but not the direct heat every time the stove cycles on.

I bought an oven thermometer and it turns out the oven is running a little over 50F degrees hotter than the dial! When I first moved into this flat every bread came out fine, but now not so much. I have concluded that since I moved in and started cranking up the temp to 5ooF or more I have basically burned off whatever leftover crud that was on the gas jets and now it is a mighty force indeed.

Thanks again for all the feedback from everyone, it was and is greatly appreciated.

All original site content copyright 2018 The Fresh Loaf unless stated otherwise. Content posted by community members is their own. The Fresh Loaf is not responsible for community member content. If you see anything inappropriate on the site or have any questions, contact me at floydm at thefreshloaf dot com. This site is powered by Drupal and Mollom.